Sunday, September 19, 2010

I love obscure covers of obscure songs... Thanks to the detective work of my wife, one of my favorite songs by the Young Gods turns out to be a cover of a song by Gary Glitter... The collision of the two is like an audio train wreck.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Neil Young always seems to amaze me with his ability to come up with something that I didn't expect... For someone with a five decade songwriting career, the production on this song is something that I might have expected more from My Bloody Valentine. My guess is his producer, Daniel Lanois had something to do with it. But still, I'm overjoyed that Neil Young is still willing to experiment with sound this late in his career.

Here is the My Bloody Valentine song Sometimes from the 1991 album Loveless for a comparison on the distortion of the guitar.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Bookshelf Porn is a great website that I discovered a few months back. It focuses not on books themselves, but instead, on images of bookshelves.

I am a collector by nature, and being a visual artist, I'm very interested in the aesthetic appearance of images and objects as well as the arrangement of those objects in groups. I have to say, I've always been skeptical of the old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover". I might counter that with, "Don't judge a saying by its catchiness". There have been very few greatbooks or records I have owned that have not also had aesthetically beautiful covers.

I have a fairly extensive collection of books, records and CD's... I love the huge amount of information contained within each one of those objects, but I also love the objects themselves. To me, the visual information on the surface of each object is almost as important as the verbal or auditory information contained within the object. This is why I have a bittersweet relationship with the future of media in the digital age. While an e-book contains exactly the same words as its [non-environmentally friendly] hardbound paper cousin, there is a certain amount of craftsmanship and love that went into not only the cover art, but also the choice of paper, the binding, the font... As well as the fact that when you look through your library at the books you've read over the years, you are reminded of how much of an impact that book had on your life at the time and how you have grown since then...

Friday, September 3, 2010

I have been a fan of Pat Condell's you tube clips for quite a while. I do like his unapologetic delivery and sharp wit, but when I saw his recent clip on the "Ground Zero Mosque" [Community Center] I was pretty disappointed in his logic and I thought he overstepped on this one.

While am personally disappointed anytime I see a church, a mosque or any other building erected for faithful followers to worship an invisible friend in the sky, I do recognize their right to do so as one of the founding principles of America in the first amendment. It is their right to the freedom of religion as well as my right to the freedom fromreligion.

Anyway, I thought this person made a great response to Pat Condell's rant on the subject. I'm still a fan of Pat, but he is not exempt from criticism when criticism is due.